Orson Welles, the “Expertly Bitchy Gossip,” Revealed in Transcripts of His Lunch Dates

It’s possible that no one in the history of history could dominate a conversation quite like Orson Welles. Find proof in the new My Lunches with Orson, an addictive and entertaining transcription of conversations between Welles and the younger writer-director Henry Jaglom, a friend of Welles’s who also served as his “sounding board, confessor, producer, agent, and biggest fan,” as Vanity Fair contributing editor Peter Biskind writes in the introduction.

Beginning in the late 1970s, Welles and Jaglom would meet for lunch at least once a week at Ma Maison, the West Hollywood bistro that doubled as Welles’s canteen. During the last three years of Welles’s life—he suffered a fatal heart attack in 1985—Jaglom, at Welles's request, taped their conversations. Notoriously erratic, Welles was making a living as a pitchman and actor for hire (mostly in junk), his career as a writer-director in famous eclipse, although he still had a number of projects in various stages of development, including a promising-sounding campaign drama titled The Big Brass Ring.

Even if none of these projects came to fruition, Welles remained a first-rate raconteur and observer—and an expertly bitchy gossip. On the first Jaglom tape alone he recalls Katharine Hepburn’s frank sex talk, dismisses Spencer Tracy as “a hateful, hateful man,” retails amusing anecdotes starring Noël Coward and Arthur Rubenstein (the latter of whom he also claims was “the greatest cocksman” of the 20th century), and says of Woody Allen, “He has the Chaplin disease. That particular combination of arrogance and timidity sets my teeth on edge.”

Biskind, likewise the author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and Down and Dirty Pictures, supervised the transcription of Jaglom’s 30-year-old tapes and edited the resulting book. He and I sat down for our own lunch this week—though unlike Orson Welles at Ma Maison, Biskind didn’t threaten to send food back just to fuck with the kitchen. Highlights from our conversation:

Bruce Handy: Did you ever meet Welles yourself?

Peter Biskind:No, and after doing this book, I really regret it—not that I ever had the opportunity. I was editing American Film Magazinein Washington during those years, but I didn’t know Jaglom, and I wasn’t really a Welles aficionado. I’d seen most of the movies, but a lot of them are such a mixed bag—I never was bitten by the Welles bug. I admired Citizen Kane a lot, but “admired” is unfortunately the correct word, because I didn’t actually enjoy it. Now I’ve changed my tune. It’s a spectacular film. You’d have to be blind not to appreciate it.

That’s mildly ironic—American Film was published by the American Film Institute, which is always releasing those lists with Citizen Kaneat the top.

I don’t understand why there’s such an obsession with lists. Who cares, really? I once had the pleasure of having dinner with an oncologist, and he was sort of condescending towards me because I told him I covered entertainment. When he asked me what my favorite film was, I responded by asking him what his favorite tumor was.

What relationship, if any, did Welles have with the filmmakers you wrote about in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls?

The 70s generation worshipped Welles because he was a maverick, an independent filmmaker. He did what they aspired to do, but he didn’t really succeed. They had it easier because the studios were in such bad straits in the late 1960s that they just opened their doors to these kids, whereas Welles by that time had a reputation of someone who walked away from his movies and got bored and never finished. He had a really rough time. Of course, drugs were not an issue with Welles. His problems were power and success, I think, and ego. If you’re the smartest guy in the room your whole life, it makes you a difficult guy to get along with—he was tremendously arrogant.

Random Welles quote: "I've always said there are three sexes: men, women, and actors. And actors combine the worst qualities of the other two."

Have you seen much of whatever survives of his 80s projects? I’m curious about The Big Brass Ring.

Welles’s script of The Big Brass Ring has been published. He’s a really good writer, and the premise of the movie is very interesting. It’s way more transgressive for its time than anything that was being made. It’s about a possible gay relationship between a political adviser and this kind of Kennedy-esque presidential candidate who’s going to run against Reagan. There’s a scene in Africa where this gay consultant is discovered in a hut with two naked locals. I’ve only seen excerpts and it’s hard to know without reading the entire script whether it works or is over-the-top. The producer Arnon Milchan [Pretty Woman, L.A. Confidential] agreed to finance it if Welles could cast the lead from a list of six or eight A-list stars. Clint Eastwood said it was too left-wing for him. Robert Redford said he was already doing a political movie. Burt Reynolds never bothered to answer and had his agent turn it down, and he was actually a friend of Welles’s—Welles was furious. Jack Nicholson finally agreed to do it, but they couldn’t meet his price. Nicholson wouldn’t reduce it, because he said that he had laboriously built it up over the years—if he halved it for Orson then he would never get his asking price again. And then there’s a famous Warren Beatty story. Beatty had just finished Reds, and he was exhausted, and he said of Big Brass Ring, “I’d love to do it, but I feel like the guy who’s been up all night fucking in a whorehouse and emerges in the light of day at seven in the morning and there’s Marilyn Monroe throwing her arms out to embrace me. I’d love to, but I can’t.”

The excerpts you read, did the screenplay feel contemporary? Did Welles understand the 1980s, even on the superficial level of contemporary idiom?

I didn’t read the whole script, but just judging from the conversations with Jaglom—some stuff I didn’t put in the book because it’s embarrassing—when he used contemporary idiom he sounded ridiculous. He kept saying, “I dig this.” But he was very interested in politics. He was a keen observer of the political scene in the 70s and 80s. He had lots to say about Nixon and Kissinger and Reagan. Earlier, he had almost run for the Senate from his home state of Wisconsin, and then again in California.

Enough Orson Welles. I always love talking to you about TV, about which you’re very passionate and opinionated. Have you been watching the third season of The Killing?

Yeah. I mean, I got annoyed like everybody else after the first season because they didn’t close out the plot. Not only did they not close out the plot, but every single episode was another false lead, and it got to be incredibly repetitious, incredibly boring. But the second season, they dropped that. And I thought the second season was fabulous, and this season I think is terrific too. Linden and Holder are such great characters, and the actors [Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman] are so good. It’s just a breath of fresh air—a breath of foggy Seattle air—and I love the low gray sky that presses down on you like a miasma.

In the beginning, I was watching mostly out of inertia, but it’s since gotten into some really dark and interesting places psychologically.

Well, look, the latest round of Mad Men took half a season to get started. With my favorite unseen series, Spiral, the French police show [Ed.: the first three seasons are available on Netflix], you’re watching the first season and again, like two-thirds into it, you see the actors getting comfortable in the characters, really bringing them to life. It takes like three or four episodes to make that happen—partly, I’m guessing, because TV series are shot so quickly.

Great scripts, great acting. Jon Voight is terrific. Liev Schreiber is terrific, playing an Anthony Pellicano–like Hollywood fixer. It’s as good as the best L.A. Noir and quite violent. I love violence if it’s done well, just like I love unlovable characters. There are these craven Hollywood studio execs that we’ve seen a million times, but I never get tired of them—guys you can’t humiliate, because they humiliate themselves every time they open their mouths; guys who don’t even understand the notion of humiliation. The creator, Ann Biderman, has an authentically quirky sensibility.

It sounds like Entourage but with lots of graphic violence.

Exactly! It’s a dark, noir-ish Entourage.Does that do it for you? It’s hard for me to explain why I like it. It’s always easier—for me, anyway—to trash something. Writing smart appreciations is very difficult, and I admire critics who can do it. Emily Nussbaum [at the New Yorker] is really good at it.